“The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.” — Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D-MN)

Friday, February 28, 2014

Not the female German Shepherd that bit Wolfgang at the Dog Park. Rather, her owner, who let her bite him three separate times. The last one got him good.

He's going into surgery right now. More later.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

UPDATE 28 February 2014 19:50: Home now, and Wolfie is resting in his crate. He never goes into his crate, but his wound is still oozing, and the confined space will keep him more still. He's sleeping. And the Cone Of Shame is not an attractive fashion accessory.

It's more corrupt than you can possibly imagine. And some of you have quite good imaginations ...

Dr. Judith Curry is a major figure in climate science - a frequent publisher in peer-reviewed journals, co-researcher with Dr. Muller's Berkeley Earth Science Temperature (BEST) data set, and chair of Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. In other words, she's not one of those beastly Deniers like you and me. And she has been slandered by Michael Mann (of "Hockey Stick") fame. Some people have suggested that she sue Mann just as Mann has sued Mark Stein. She isn't, but raises some incredibly important points about the diseased state of the scientific establishment:

All this is becoming quite the soap opera. Apart from the
entertainment being provided for the climate blogosphere, there are
three really important issues at stake here:

freedom of speech

academic freedom

media access to information

I come down stalwartly on the side freedom of speech and media access to information.

...
With regards to climate science, IMO the key issue regarding academic
freedom is this: no scientist should have to fall on their sword to
follow the science where they see it leading or to challenge the
consensus. I’ve fallen on my dagger (not the full sword), in that my
challenge to the consensus has precluded any further professional
recognition and a career as a university administrator. That said, I
have tenure, and am senior enough to be able retire if things genuinely
were to get awful for me. I am very very worried about younger
scientists, and I hear from a number of them that have these concerns.[emphasis mine - Borepatch]

Tenure is an amazing privilege for academics. And now we see in the
Mann/UVa case, that the establishment academics are worried about fear of embarrassment by public disclosure and fear that those who dislike their findings will conduct invasive fishing expeditions in search of a pretext to discredit them. Come
on, big boy pants please. We are talking about publicly funded
research, and a primary concern is supposed to be avoiding embarrassing
the scientists?

For the past decade, scientists have come to the defense of Michael
Mann, somehow thinking that defending Michael Mann is fighting against
the ‘war on science’ and is standing up for academic freedom. Its time
to let Michael Mann sink or swim on his own. Michael Mann is having
all these problems because he chooses to try to muzzle people that are
critical of Mann’s science, critical of Mann’s professional and personal behavior, and critical of Mann’s
behavior as revealed in the climategate emails. All this has nothing
to do with defending climate science or academic freedom.

The climate science field, and the broader community of academics,
have received an enormous black eye as a result of defending the hockey
stick and his behavior. Its time to increase the integrity of climate
research particularly with regards to increasing transparency, calling
out irresponsible advocacy, and truly promoting academic freedom so that
scientists are free to pursue research without fear of recriminations
from the gatekeepers and consensus police. [emphasis mine - Borepatch]

Remember, Dr. Curry is a climatologist. By her own admission, she has precluded further advancement of her scientific career by straying from the "consensus" view in her scientific publications. Only tenure protects her from more draconian retaliation.

This is not the sign that climate science (as practiced in mainstream scientific institutions) is healthy. And this isn't by any means the first time that we've caught a glimpse of the velvet clad iron fist.

Ugandan President Yoweri
Museveni signed into law Monday, February 24, the
“Anti-Homosexuality” bill, which stiffens penalties against
homosexuality, already criminal under Ugandan law.

...

UPDATE: The Netherlands, Denmark and Norway
have
frozen or redirected millions in aid to the country. According
to Secretary of State John Kerry, the United States is reviewing
its relationship with Uganda after the president signed the
law.

...UPDATE (6:45 p.m. ET 2/26/14): Secreary of
State
John Kerry has likened Uganda's anti-gay bill to nazism and
apartheid saying, "You could change the focus of this legislation
to black or... Jewish, and you could be in 1930s Germany or you
could be in 1950s, 60s apartheid South Africa."UPDATE: (8:37 a.m. ET 2/27/14): At least
three European countries have already begun the process of
cutting foreign aid to Uganda.

Pitting the interests of academic freedom against transparency, media
access, and freedom of information, a high-profile case before the
Virginia Supreme Court involving climate scientist Michael Mann is
expected to be decided over the next few weeks.

...

The key issue in the pending case over the quest for Mann’s e-mails
involves the extent of Virginia’s state freedom of information laws,
which ATI is using to request Mann’s documents. That issue has
galvanized a coalition of 18 heavyweight press groups — including the
Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Associated Press,
Reuters, NPR, Dow Jones, Politico, The Washington Post and others — who somewhat quietly penned a friend-of-the-court or “amicus” brief favoring disclosure of this type of e-mail.

Meanwhile, the National Academy of Sciences and a number of large higher
education associations and other academic interests are supporting
Mann’s position with their own legal brief. Michael Halpern of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has written about relevant background
for the scientific community. “The court clearly understood the
potential consequences of the actions it is being asked to take,” Halpern wrote
after attending the Virginia Supreme Court’s January 2014 hearing,
“with multiple justices talking about how the interpretive standard they
set will apply not just to this case but to tens of thousands of
cases.”

Wow, just wow. While the article has the expected careless bias showing (talking about the "hacked" CRU emails which were leaked, not hacked; blather about how the scientists were exonerated - Stein's lawsuit is precisely about how this is not correct), this is turning into an epic showdown between the too-comfortable scientific establishment* and a Press that is actually standing up for needed transparency.

The Washington Post’s printed editorial position, just to take one example, illustrates the unusual turns the case has produced. In 2010, the Post’s editorial board weighed in heavily
in support of Mann as he fended off what were widely seen as
Cuccinelli’s ideologically motivated attempts to gain access to
documents. The paper on its editorial page has continued to do so,
pointing to what it calls a “witch hunt.” In May 2011, the paper’s editors called for a stop
to “harassing climate-change researchers,” specifically citing ATI’s
lawsuit and saying the university was “right” to claim a proprietary
exemption.

“Academics must feel comfortable sharing research,” the Post’s
board wrote then, “disagreeing with colleagues and proposing
conclusions — not all of which will be correct — without fear that those
who dislike their findings will conduct invasive fishing expeditions in
search of a pretext to discredit them.”

And yet the Post’s management and legal department are nevertheless a party to the amicus brief against Mann and the University of Virginia.

My interpretation of this is that the MSM establishment has written off Global Warming and that while they individually are almost certainly sympathetic to the goals of the Big Green Machine, they don't see it going anywhere - and certainly not anywhere worth a weakened Freedom Of Information Act.

Apple has released OS X 10.9.2 which, you'll be delighted to know,
improves the "accuracy" of the unread message count in Mail, and fixes
the autofill feature in Safari among other little tweaks.

It also
just so happens to snap shut a gaping security vulnerability that
potentially allowed hackers to hijack users' bank accounts, read their
email, steal their passwords, and compromise other SSL-encrypted
communications.

On Friday afternoon, the Cupertino giant updated iOS 7 and 6
for iPhones, iPods, iPads, and Apple TVs to squash a flaw that
knackered the integrity of SSL connections: a programming bug caused
Apple's SSL code to skip over vital checks of a server's authenticity
when establishing a connection. Apps affected by the flaw were left with
no way to securely prove who they were talking to over the network.

The updates are for iPhone (you will by now have seen the message saying that an update is available) and for OSX. The OSX update is here. iPhone update is available via iTunes.

If you have any question whether you need the updates, take your safari browser to a test at gotofail.com.

I had a nice chat with Brigid last evening, about dogs and what they mean to us, and family, and cabbages and Kings. Over the last few years she's become one of my favorite people in the world, and we've never even met. The Blogosphere has brought us together, and enriched my life.

And quite frankly, it's the same for you. There's quite a crowd that gathers here every now and then, and all of you enrich my life through your comments, and linkatude, and general awesomeness.

So thank you, Gentle Reader, for coming here and enriching my life. I don't think I've said that in a while, but it means quite a lot to me.

And it's all through the magic of the Internet. It looks like it's fixin' to get unseasonably cold here for a few days, so Al Gore must be in town. If I see him, I shall thank him for his most excellent Information Superhighway, without which I would never have met Barkley and Brigid, or Blogfather JayG, or you. It breaks down the miles that make our solitude, and is a wonder for which I am quite grateful.

Hope is like a road in the country; there was
never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into
existence.

That last one is particularly interesting - the old saw goes that when conflict looms amateurs talk strategy while professionals talk logistics. It also casts some light on the gap in time between Alexander's first two big battles with the Persians, and the final one.

I'd like to see a post about the dynamics of the Persian Empire itself. It expanded rapidly and collapsed quickly.

Her's is a fine epitaph, no less his due. All of us who share our lives with dogs know that their - and our - fate is to go before us, leaving a hole in our hearts where once unlimited devotion was found.

Near this Spot
are deposited the Remains of one
who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferocity,
and all the virtues of Man without his Vices.

He said: ‘My regiment had been given the order to fight to the last man and the last round and not to retire, and this painting shows our position after a long day's battle. I fought in that battle.

‘The regiment was almost wiped out - but by some miracle, I was the last man virtually, and I fired the last round. That round, which was at about six o'clock at night, hit a Mark IV tank.

'Then the man standing at the side of me was killed because a German tank had come up behind us and fired its machine gun, almost point blank. And I took a deep breath and waited for mine.

'For some reason the tank didn't fire and I survived and am still here. You feel guilty for having survived.

What happened next is incredible:

Mr Ellis was captured and taken to a prisoner of war camp, but launched a daring escape and found shelter with a sympathetic family.

He was shipped from Libya to the camp in Italy but escaped by marching out of the main gate as if on a work party and hid in the mountains for a year. A young girl discovered him and led him to the farming family who sheltered him.

Mr Ellis named one of his daughters, Nerina, after her, and has returned regularly to the hill village of Massa Fermana, near Ancona, to visit the family who kept him alive.

A bunch of people have been musing on the reliability or lack thereof of this technology, and saying that they'd demand that the cops have them too to demonstrate adequate reliability. Me, I'm not so sure. My starting position is that the software quality is almost certain to be miserable, but (while I'm admittedly nasty and suspicious) that's not my beef.

This uses wireless communications between the gun and some sort of fob (watch, ring, bracelet, etc.). What are the communication protocols? Nobody says. Has there been an independent security examination (a "penetration test" in technical jargon)? Nobody says. That silence is all you need to know that the security of the system is a sewer of vulnerability.

And so it's entirely plausible that someone could make up some sort of fob that scans for these guns and then runs an exploit against them, disabling them. In other words, the "Bad Guy" Smart Gun® wristwatch beats the Good Guy™ wristwatch and when Good Guy pulls the trigger there's no boom.

If these sorts of guns ever become popular (because all others are banned), I expect to see this sort of attack pretty quickly. The Computer Security crowd leans pretty heavily towards gun rights, and pretty much hates most forms of Big Government douchebaggery, and so this would get a lot of attention for the guys who pulled it off. In other words, the motivation to do the investigation is high.

State Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) on Friday is expected to
introduce legislation requiring all smartphones and tablets sold in the
state to contain a so-called "kill switch," which would render the
device inoperable if it was lost or stolen. The bill, which is sponsored
by San Francisco Attorney General George Gascón, would apply to any
device sold after Jan. 1, 2015.

So once only "Smart" guns can be sold, how long until there's a legally required backdoor in the software that allows the Authorities to disable the weapon from a distance? Do we measure that timespan in minutes or milliseconds?

To disarm the people is the most effectual way to enslave them.

- George Mason

The government of Athens, TN would have loved to have this. J. Edgar Hoover would have loved to have had this. Viktor Yanukovich would have loved to have had this.

And quite frankly, I suspect that the people who think that you can be forced to buy insurance you don't need or want, who think that TV news content should be regulated by FCC Commissars, who like the IRS auditing their political enemies, and who think that people who advocate for decentralized government in line with the text of the Constitution are "Domestic Terrorists" - I suspect that they'd like to have this sort of capability, too.

And so the problem with "Smart" guns isn't that the technology might not work. The problem is that it might work all too well.

A government resting on the minority is an aristocracy, not a Republic, and could not be safe with a numerical and physical force against it, without a standing army, an enslaved press and a disarmed populace.

- James Madison

Actually, this quote nicely captures the activity of the IRS. the FCC, and gun control laws. Got all we can use, thanks.

Bootnote: There's no question as to whether the NSA has the expertise to crack this technology. No question at all.

Yeah, I know I'm late posting on this topic. Everyone else was doing a such a great job of mocking the mockable that I didn't really have anything to add. Until now. "San Diego Police Chief Bill Lansdowne" - does that ring a bell? Why yes indeed:

San Diego Police Chief, William Lansdowne said in an interview that
the implementation of new gun laws will take guns off the streets of
America within a generation.

According to San Diego 6, Lansdowne said that it may take a
generation but guns will eventually be taken off the streets through new
laws like Senator Dianne Feinstein’s proposed assault weapons ban:

“Chief Lansdowne, who plays an active role in the western region of
the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) association,
said it may take a generation but guns will eventually be taken off the
streets through new laws like Senator Diane Feinstein’s proposed assault
weapons ban legislation. Some of the items his organization is
addressing include; a ban on assault weapons, restricting high-capacity
magazines, closing loopholes that allow firearm sales between private
owners without background checks, and implementing much stricter
background checks by using a comprehensive database.”

Country music flirts with telling epic stories, but opera is defined as epic stories. This isn't an accident: opera grew out of the Renaissance desire to recreate ancient Greek theater, where the Chorus (and maybe all parts) were sung. The stories told in the early operas were solely from the ancient Greek and Roman canon. The use of these stories was common in the late 16th Century, and in fact Shakespeare is full of them (Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Titus Andronicus).

The oldest couple of operas are lost to us, but in 1607 along came Claudio Monteverdi, and suddenly opera was not just here to stay, but so was Baroque. Monteverdi was instrumental in the birth of both forms, and had an enormous reputation during his lifetime at the time as one of the greatest composers. But after Monteverdi's death in 1643 this opera was forgotten. It was rediscovered by a musicologist and revived in 1904, nearly three centuries after its first performance.

L'Orfeo tells the tale of Orpheus, a tale from the ancient Greek Mystery Religions where Orpheus - the greatest musician of the Age - descends to Hades to attempt to bring back his bride Eurydice. While the musical style appears overly formal to those of use used to letting our musical hair down with Puccini and Wagner, it's very likely similar to the style of the ancient world. It is in an case the oldest opera you are likely to ever see performed, as it gets rolled out fairly regularly, as you see in this performance from the Opernhauses Zürich.

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Probably a week late, but it was cold and snowy. While I miss our friends from the People's Republic of Massachusetts (all y'all know who you are), springtime is a glory here in Dixie. As are the gun laws.

The enduring attraction of Country music is that it tells a story. Sometimes it's a story of something like what's happened to you, or to someone you know. Other genres of music do this, too.

But sometimes the stories are epic, like something out of Homer or the Chansons de Geste. If this is your bag, baby, then you typically only have two choices: Opera, or Country.

This song could have been sung around a campfire of Caesar's Legions, or on a Viking Longship, or in Valley Forge. It is but the latest addition to the timeless list of Epic Poetry that has come down through the ages. Gilgamesh knew this song. So did Roland. The words and tune change, but the song remains the same.

Songs like this don't get much air play these days. They are seen as a quaint relic of a less enlightened past, not useful for the cultural elites and their dreams of a transformed society. That's why they need to be played.

I was a highwayman. Along the coach roads I did ride.
With sword and pistol by my side.
Many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade.
Many a soldier shed his lifeblood on my blade.
The bastards hung me in the spring of twenty-five.
But I am still alive.

I was a sailor. I was born upon the tide.
And with the sea I did abide.
I sailed a schooner round the Horn to Mexico.
I went aloft and furled the mainsail in a blow.
And when the yards broke off they said that I got killed.
But I am living still.

I was a dam builder across the river deep and wide.
Where steel and water did collide.
A place called Boulder on the wild Colorado.
I slipped and fell into the wet concrete below.
They buried me in that great tomb that knows no sound.
But I am still around.
I'll always be around, and around, and around, and around, and around.

I fly a starship across the Universe divide.
And when I reach the other side,
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can.
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again.
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain.
But I will remain.
And I'll be back again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

The words and tune change, but the song remains the same.

But Patroclus, overcome by the stroke of the god and by the spear, drew
back into the throng of his comrades, avoiding fate. But Hector, when he
beheld great-souled Patroclus drawing back, smitten with the sharp
bronze, came nigh him through the ranks, and smote him with a thrust of
his spear in the nethermost belly, and drave the bronze clean through;
and he fell with a thud, and sorely grieved the host of the Achaeans.
And as a lion overmastereth in fight an untiring boar, when the twain
fight with high hearts on the peaks of a mountain for a scant spring,
wherefrom both are minded to drink: hard panteth the boar, yet the lion
overcometh him by his might; even so from the valiant son of Menoetius,
after he had slain many, did Hector, Priam's son, take life away,
smiting him from close at hand with his spear.

Goober brings the clue-by-four down on the lefties that are (surprise!) spouting nonsense:

One of the folks who is rooting for the prosecution of every
gun owner in the state who either failed to comply, or who tried to comply but
missed the deadline, is suggesting that they use the background check database
to find out who bought an assault weapon, cross reference that to the folks who
didn’t register an assault weapon, and then go pay those folks a visit.

Once again, the absolute ignorance of these people when it
comes to guns and existing laws is just jaw-dropping. Also, they have already contradicted the
arguments against the background check system, in that it would be used as a de
facto registry – that didn’t take long.
But I’m just a paranoid nut.

Allow me to lay a little bit of learning on you, folks…

The background check database is going to tell you three
things:

1.Who applied for a gun purchase;

2.Whether the gun was a long gun or a pistol;

3.Whether they were approved to purchase the
weapon or not.

What it is NOT going to tell you is the following:

1.If the gun was actually purchased after approval
(it isn’t entirely unheard of that a guy changes his mind after approval and
doesn’t buy the gun);

2.If the gun was a scary black gun or one of the
friendly wooden-stocked types, identical in every way to the scary gun, but
without the scary looking features like the shoulder thingy that goes up.

3.If the person who bought the gun still owns said
gun. Contrary to popular belief, it is
totally legal for a man to sell his own legally owned property without asking
the state’s permission.

He then does a thought experiment - what if you could actually do it (even though you can't)? Spoiler alert - it still wouldn't work. RTWT.

1. Microsoft's Patch Tuesday update fixes a bug in Internet Explorer 9 and 10 that is being exploited in the wild. If you have Windows Update enabled (and it's a very bad idea not to have this enabled) then this may already have been done. This isn't a problem if you have a Mac or Linux, or if you don't use Internet Explorer. If you use a company computer, and if your company has a big IT organization, then they may already have pushed this out to you.

2. Adobe has an emergency patch for Flash (the technology that powers video like Youtube). Be careful when you get their upgrade, in that they bundle a lot of bloatware (e.g. McAfee's Security Scan) with their Flash. You can click the box to turn this off, but you will want to pay attention during the install.

Both of these issues are rated critical, so you'll want to make sure you have the update.

And yes, this is worth three minutes of your time. Smartest dude in a thousand years. And it sort of gets to the bottom of the "Creationism vs. Evolution" controversy at argument #1 (or is it 2? Dang, he's smarter than me).

I was going to post on the tendency of leftist states to go all feral and repressive, but realized that I had already posted this years ago, from the Pleistocene Age of this blog (yes, back when TJIC was still posting, in other words, before the leftist Government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts went feral on him, in a very up close and personal way).

In his post, DeLong writes eloquently about non-economic issues, with pictures. That got me thinking of Stalin's remark that one death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic. The statistics are damning, but the soul crushing thought control that was the USSR deserves remembrance, too.

Boris Pasternak is best known for his novel Dr. Zhivago, which
won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1958. Considered
Counter-Revolutionary, it ended Pasternak's career in the USSR. He was
forced to decline the Prize, and even had to refuse royalties from western publishers:

Secret
CC CPSU
16APR 1959
To be returned to the
General Dept., CC CPSU
Not for publication
CC CPSU
B. Pasternak turned to me for advice on what he should do in
connection with the proposal of the Norwegian publishers to receive
money for the book "Doctor Zhivago."
...Pasternak would like to receive this money, a portion of
which he intends to give to the Literary Fund "for the needs of
elderly writers."
I think that Pasternak should refuse receipt of money from the
Norwegian bank.
I am asking for permission to express this point of view.
(signed)
D. Polikarpov
April 16 1959
[HANDWRITTEN]

CC CPSU stands for Central Committee of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Bill Mauldin, of "Willie and
Joe" cartoon fame, won a Pulitzer Prize for this cartoon on the subject:

Only an appeal from Jawaharlal Nehru to Khrushchev himself saved
Pasternak from exile. I'm old enough to remember the joke from the
1960s:

"I'm not afraid of A-Bombs,"
says Khrushchev, and he knows it.
"I'm not afraid of anything,
except, perhaps, a poet."

The title of this post comes from the Soviet era joke about the situation. Some joke.

One man is a tragedy, not a statistic. But Pasternak wasn't alone.
Mario Vargas Llosa just won the Nobel Prize in Literature this year. He
has been a vocal critic of authoritarian left-wing governments, most
famously his denunciation of Castro in 1970. He saw the soul crushing
need for the Socialist State to silence dissent, and spoke up about it
when many western Intellectuals were happy to explain it away with
"Better health care" or some such nonsense.

Many still do. After all, it must be the malice or incompetence
of individuals that led to this. It couldn't possibly be a rotten
system. They clearly don't read TJIC:

if when you attempt to implement “wonderful communism” and every single frickin’ time you get mass murder, starvation, and gulags, then that is communism

The
statistics are damning. The lives behind the statistics - crushed by
an Intellectual Machine that fears all dissenting views - those are even
more damning.

It's worth remembering that this Intellectual Machine is wildly popular on University campuses world wide.

-------------------------------------------------------

Bootnote: back then I had like three readers, and nobody commented on this. It's comment worthy (hint, hint).

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Major-General Logan Scott-Bowden, who has died aged 93, carried out secret reconnaissance missions to the Normandy beaches which paved the way for the D-Day landings.

Scott-Bowden was a member of the Combined Operations Pilotage Parties (COPP), a small unit which specialised in the clandestine survey of potential sites for the Allied landings in Italy and later France. On the night of New Year’s Eve 1943, he and Sergeant Bruce Ogden-Smith, clad in rubber swimsuits, swam for 400 yards from a landing craft to the area west of Ver-Sur-Mer, later known as Gold Beach.

Each carried a Colt 45, a commando knife, wire cutters, wrist compass, emergency rations, waterproof torch and an earth auger for testing the bearing capacity of the beach. The objective of their mission was to determine whether the landing area would stand up to the weight of heavy vehicles disembarking in great numbers. If armour and supply vehicles became bogged down in a hitherto undetected substratum of clay or peat bog, it would put the whole operation in jeopardy.

...

As they moved along the beach, they had to flatten themselves on the ground every minute as the beam from the local lighthouse swept over them. Heavy rain arrived to provide some very welcome cover and, encouraged by the sounds of New Year celebrations, the pair spent several hours collecting samples in bandoliers.

Heavily laden by the time they attempted the return journey, they were thrown back many times by the rough sea before they managed to get through the surf.

I've turned into a huge Snowboard Cross fan. Not only do you have the excitement of all the racers on the slopes at the same time, you have the added excitement of how wipe outs take out not just the wipeout-er, but the wipeout-ee, One of the races yesterday at Sochi saw one guy fall taking out not just himself, but three other racers.

In other words, in a race that placed three, only two were left standing. Awesome. Reminds me of NASCAR, only snowy and wheel-less. Waitin' for a crash ...

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

"Mosquito Squadron", from 1969. There were still a bunch of the old birds still air worthy, and they make the centerpiece of the film. Plus major roles played by David McCallum (Man From U.N.C.L.E.) and Charles Gray (You Only Live Twice, Rocky Horror Picture Show). And Suzanne Neve who I'd not seen before, but who is quite dishy here.

A film like this could never be made today because it is unapologetically patriotic and portrays the military in a positive light. It was made 24 years after V-E Day, and so the equivalent for today would be a film about the first Gulf War. Indeed, we did see one of those made, but of a very different flavor towards patriotism and the military.

... I simply no longer see any good reason to give Government Agents the benefit of the doubt. I actually think that a lot of them are trying to keep us safe. I actually think that many of them are doing what they think the country needs.

But I also look at the IRS targeting the Administration's enemies, and the Justice Department targeting journalists, and the ATF running guns to drug lords. And I haven't even scratched the surface of what's going on: INS traffic stops 100 miles from the boarder, TSA pat downs of Grandmothers and toddlers, "no knock" raids on the wrong houses. The bill of indictment is long indeed. The whole rotten lot of them look like they are maybe on the Other Side.

Maybe.

Are they? Five years ago I would have personally hand folded you a tin foil hat. Now? I'm not at all sure. Welcome to the New Normal. If you aren't wondering, you're not paying attention.

You know it is bad when even hardcore Tolkien fans not only can't be
bothered to see it, but devoutly wish to avoid ever being forced to lay
eyes upon it. A commenter named Rainforest Giant summarizes the problem,
not only with Peter Jackson ruining The Hobbit, but with the entire
edifice of Pink and Postmodern SF/F:

"Jackson... ruins heroics because he cannot
understand heroism. He ruins a fairy tale because his world lacks the
deep magic. His villains are straight out of Scooby Doo. His special
effects mere lights smoke and mirrors. His understanding of war and
conflict as meaningless as Xena or Buffy. Tolkien understood war, sacrifice, magic (as a storyteller and
father), heroes and villains, hope and despair. Jackson lacks a deeper
soul thats why he writes bad fan fiction and cartoon action."

I think that Jackson lost me at the end of the Lord Of The Rings when the Eye Of Sauron said "And I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids!" No thanks. There's so much good material he leaves out, and so much junk he creates to replace it that I'm not interested.

Today the USA celebrates the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. I'm torn - I list the greatest and worst Presidents in this post, naming Washington as the greatest and Lincoln as the worst. It seems that I'm not unique in this: in Alabama the holiday celebrates the birthdays of Washington and Thomas Jefferson (which is odd since Jefferson was born in April; BTW, Jefferson made it into my top 5 list). Also, Arkansas celebrates Washington's birthday and Daisy Bates who is certainly an upgrade from Mr. Lincoln.

I actually think that Lincoln can be correctly described as the first fascist American President. Furherprinzip embodying the Public Will, and all that. That's actually how it's taught, even.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

I have to say that I've been enjoying the Olympics. The snow board race is a lot of fun to watch. It really highlights just how many of the events are individual time trials - a lot of the fun of snowboard cross is that you have a half dozen competitors on the piste at the same time.

Love frightens me because, unlike death, love cannot be understood.
Love can only be given, gotten, taken or dropped. Like death, it would
seem that, once discovered, there's no end to it -- or, to take
Hemingway's point of view, no good end to it since one way or another death will trump love -- in this world at least.

Love is where the Poetics of life collide with the Politics. It's a
collision where the possibility having to call in the MedEvac helicopter
and the coroner is always present; where wreckage is assured and
survival never promised. Falling in love is, as a comedian noted, like
buying a puppy. You are purchasing a tragedy.

No, that's not quite right. Say rather you are purchasing a
hybrid; a tragicomedy or a comic tragedy, since love always has, for
those of us removed from its immediate drama, elements of the
ridiculous, slices of the sublime, and not a few moments of boffo
laughter at the shambling human animal.

Prose as jazz, on the greatest of the Great Questions. They can never really be answered. Just sung.

No school like the Old School. Hank Locklin was one of the early Honky Tonk singers, selling north of 15 Million records over his 60 year career. He released 65 albums, which has to be some sort of record*. Interestingly, he had a large following in Europe, and one of his albums was Irish Songs Country Style.

He played at the Grand Ole Opry for nearly 50 years. This video is him performing his biggest hit there.

Please help me I'm falling in love with you
Close the door to temptation don't let me walk thru
For I should't want you
But darling I do

Please help me I'm falling in love with you
Please help me falling and that would be sin
Close the door to temptation don't let me walk in
Turn away from me darling
I'm begging you true
Please help me I'm falling in love with you

Today is the 89th anniversary of the arrival of serum at Nome, Alaska. It was delivered through the heart of the Alaskan winter by a sled dog team led by Balto, for a while the most famous dog in the world. This is the event that inspired the annual Iditarod race.

Even with the recent Snowmageddon here in Dixie, you can't do this. But with the introduction of small video cameras, here is someone taking us along with her.

#2 Son loves huskies more than any other breed. Wonder if he'll end up moving to Alaska.

Billy Rios, director of threat intelligence at Qualys, here today said
he and colleague Terry McCorkle purchased a secondhand Rapiscan 522 B
X-ray system via eBay and found several blatant security weaknesses that
leave the equipment vulnerable to abuse: It runs on the outdated
Windows 98 operating system, stores user credentials in plain text, and
includes a feature called Threat Image Projection used to train
screeners by injecting .bmp images of contraband, such as a gun or
knife, into a passenger carry-on in order to test the screener's
reaction during training sessions. The weak logins could allow a bad guy
to project phony images on the X-ray display.

But fear not, Citizen. The TSA is staffed by professionals. And Government processes will ensure that the outcome is over determined:

"This reminded me a lot of voting machines. When you design these
government systems under procurement rules, you end up using old stuff.
No one is paying attention to updating it, so security is crap because
no one is analyzing it," says Bruce Schneier, CTO of Co3 Systems. "Stuff
done in secret gets really shoddy security ... We know what gives us
security is the constant interplay between the research community and
vendors."

Yeah, good luck with that here.

"These bugs are actually embarrassing. It was embarrassing to report
them to DHS -- the ability to bypass the login screen. These are really
lame bugs," Rios says.

Poor people in Britain are suffering from a far higher inflation rate than the rich, according to research released today by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) that shows the impact of soaring food and energy bills on those with the lowest incomes.

The
thinktank said the least well off had experienced a higher cost of
living than the wealthy for the past decade, but that the difference had
widened sharply since the long, deep recession of 2008 and 2009.

In
a study that coincides with the release of new official data today, the
IFS said its analysis using the retail prices index (RPI) showed that
the poorest fifth of households had faced an inflation rate of 4.3%
between 2008 and 2010, compared to 2.7% for the richest fifth of
households. RPI inflation has continued to rise in 2011 and stood at
5.2% in April.

5% inflation in Her Majesty's Scepter'd Isle, compared to a measly 1.5% in the USA. Boy, we sure do a better job than in Blighty, right? Well, take a look at the culprit in the UK:

... that shows the impact of soaring food and energy bills on those with the lowest incomes.

Here and around the world, the prices of everything from cotton to
coffee have risen. The Department of Agriculture forecast for food costs
in 2011 calls for an increase of 3 percent to 4 percent. And, the price
of fuel is up -- a lot.

Yet, the government's measure of inflation,
the Consumer Price Index, barely registers an increase in the prices
consumers are paying. Economists don't expect an inflation increase of
more than 1.5 percent this year, "even if food goes up 3 percent and
energy goes up 10 percent," says Bill Hampel, chief economist for the
Credit Union National Association.

...

What gives? Don't food and fuel prices count in the tabulation of the index? Not really.

So who pays a (much) higher portion of their income for food and gasoline? The poor. So why isn't the Left screaming bloody murder about this? Because the social programs (New Deal, Great Society) are all teetering on insolvency. A lower CPI means that they go broke less quickly. Sharp eyed readers will note that with inflation at 1.5% and GDP growth around 2%, these programs cost less in real terms. That savings can be applied to other Lefty programs - say healthcare.

And so the Left is immiserating the poor and the elderly ("Chained CPI" is a blatant attempt to further reduce CPI for Social Security) in order to feed the maw of the Progressive Superstate. For Social Justice™. Because Shut Up.

And for some reason, these SWPL jerks feel more noble than the rest of us ...

Purple means record low, white means record snowfall. This is actually pretty interesting as a demonstration of the low quality of the surface temperature database. I'm not buying record high (red dot) in Greenville, NC, Memphis, Chicago, and Portsmouth NH. Just not buying it. What seems much more likely is a data error or some sort of malfunction. The data sets are quite frankly full of this sort of thing, and the software to "correct" things adjusts the data so that temperatures appear to be higher.

But even with the data being cooked, January was record miserable weather.

I keep saying this, because it's true: if you're looking to get into a growth industry, the Internet Security field needs you. Bad:

ESG [Research] is about to publish its 2014 IT spending intentions research as it does each year. In reviewing this data, I found continuing bad news about the IT security skills shortage. ESG research found that:

Of those organizations planning on adding new IT staff positions in 2014, 42% say they will increase headcount in information security. This is the highest percentage of all IT skill sets (note: the #2 choice was IT architects at 35%).

Twenty-five percent of all organizations surveyed claim that they have "problematic shortage" of information security skills at their organizations. Once again, this was a higher percentage than any other individual IT category (note: the #2 choice was IT architects again at 24%).

RTWT for the list of industries that cannot get and retain security talent. This means that wages will be rising for the foreseeable time, as will job security. In this economy, that's not a bad thing.

"But Borepatch", I hear you say, "that's easy for you to say having been in that industry since like 1066 A.D. or whatever. But how do I break in?" Easy - Cisco certifications.

Start with the entry level CCNA, which will open some doors just by itself. This series of Youtube videos is very high caliber, and walks you through the entire curriculum. You can also look at the slides here. Spend a month or two of evenings and you'll have the material down - it's not landing a man on the moon, it's just basic blocking and tackling. Then you take the Cisco certification test for a few hundred bucks. Quite frankly, that might be enough to score an entry level IT networking job.

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